This document discusses the future of books and libraries in a digital age. It defines what a book, library, and reading may look like as print transitions to digital formats. Some of the key points made are that both print and digital formats will be needed; libraries will continue to be important spaces for imagination and accessing culture; and new forms of creative reading and writing are emerging online through blogs, fanfiction, and digital literature.

1. if:book
The Future of the Book
Imagination & Digitisation
Media Futures Conference
Chris Meade

2. What is a book?
“sadly there are thousands… (of) schools where
the library is still a few shelves in a corridor,
where books are a low priority, where head
teachers believe that all a love of books can
do, is better done by a computer. It should
never be a case of either, or. We need both:
IT and a great library.”
- Michael Morpurgo, Times Online, Jan 2009

3. What is a library
 The laptop is the access point to an
amazing free library
 How to promote creative reading
skills for the digital age?
 It’s not a matter of page versus screen.

4. What is if:book
 A think and do tank exploring the future
of the book as our culture moves from
printed page to networked screen
…and the potential of new media
for creative readers and writers

5. Who am I??
> Public libraries as Imagination Service
> Your local point of access to culture
> Helping poetry thrive in Britain today
Poetry Places
 Bringing Books and People together..
 Bookstart…Everybody Writes…
 THEN… Creative Writing & New Media

6. What is a library?
 A public private space
 A breathing space
 An imagination service
A special place from which to view the web.

7. What is a book?
This year’s iPod moment:
A book is an experience
 A container of culture
 A conversation
 A bounded entity
 A constantly changing
form - from papyrus to
Codex to paperback
and beyond

8. Is reading dying?
QuickTimeª and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
 One third of UK don’t ‘do’ books
 Readers online don’t concentrate
 But the web still relies on reading and writing
 Young people want stories, ideas, information - no
problem with books
 They like the ‘look and feel’ too
 NEED HELP navigating their way

9. Creative Reading & Writing
We can all publish
ourselves
We can all respond to
what we read
But do young people
Read in a new way?

10. “Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind” - Mark Bauerlein
 Chronicle of Higher Education in the US:
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i04/04b01001.htm
 "When Jakob Nielsen, a Web researcher, tested 232 people for
how they read pages on screens, a curious disposition
emerged. "We should accept that the Web is too fast-paced for
big-picture learning. No problem; we have other media, and
each has its strengths. At the same time, the Web is perfect for
narrow, just-in-time learning of information nuggets — so long
as the learner already has the conceptual framework in place to
make sense of the facts.""

11. New Ways with Words
 Blogosphere
 Fanfiction
 Alternate Reality Games
 Wikinovels
 New Media Writing…
- all need to be on the library map

12. Some e-writers
 Cory Doctorow
 Naomi Alderman Perplex City
 Kate Pullinger -
 www.inanimatealice.com
 Tim Wright
www.onlinecaroline.com
Dreaming Methods
www.dreamingmethods.com

13. Some e-readers
Kindle
Sony Reader
iPhone
Nintendo
Any phone
Any laptop
The coloured
e-inked flexi-page
Cometh!

14. The web of words
But for how much longer?
Youtube replacing Google for search?

15. e-readers
How do we help
Young people
Read in
New Ways?

16. Experiments in Reading
 http://futureofthebook.org.uk/blake/book.html
 www.songsofimaginationanddigitisation.net
 www.thegoldennotebook.org
 www.futureofthebook.org/blog
 www.bookfutures.blogspot.com
 www.motfothotbook.net

17. Library of the
Future of the Book
Digital imagination -
Showing what’s on offer
Taking care of
what really
matters

18. School Library of the Future?
 E-Reading groups
 Find of the week
 Displays of different reading platforms